A YEAR-LONG expedition to find pirate fishermen who kill thousands of albatrosses and other endangered seabirds every year set sail from Scotland yesterday.

John Ridgway, 65, who rowed the North Atlantic with the round-the-world yachtsman Chay Blyth in 1966, is leading the mission to track down illegal fishing fleets and to highlight the birds’ plight.

The crew set sail from Mr Ridgway’s hometown of Ardmore, Highland, at 8am yesterday aboard the 30ft-long sloop English Rose VI.

Ridgway will report and film illegal fishing operations that are pushing 17 of the 21 Southern hemisphere albatross species to the brink of extinction. Numbers have plummeted since long-line fishing methods were introduced in the region in the 1980s. More than 300,000 birds, including 100,000 albatrosses, are lured on to baited hooks each year, either drowning or dying of their injuries.

Mr Ridgway, a former paratrooper, wants the pirate boats banned and hopes that international action will shut down their black market in fish.

Speaking before his departure, he said: “I cannot stand by and watch this happen. I’m putting together and funding an entirely independent voyage round the world to raise public awareness and prevent this needless slaughter.”

The trip will be made up of seven legs, each one highlighting the predicament of a different albatross species. He will sail via the Canaries to Cape Town, then track east in the Southern Ocean, following the westerly wind-driven route of the wandering albatross to Melbourne, Australia, and Wellington, New Zealand.

Then he will sail to Port Stanley in the Falklands, South Georgia and Gough Island, which lies in midAtlantic 1,600 miles off the South African coast, before returning to London from Cape Town next July.

Mr Ridgway and his crew, who include his wife, Marie-Christine, were to have sailed on Saturday, but delayed their departure for final checks on their communications equipment.

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